Ohio Maltz Museum's exhibition for Jewish comics contributions

NPR-WOSU covers an exhibition of Jewish comics contributions at the Maltz Museum in Ohio. It was also organized by a historian who was involved in getting a NYC street named after Jack Kirby:

“Icons in Ink, The Jewish Comics Experience,” on view at the Maltz Museum in Beachwood through Aug. 23, is a revelation and a celebration, albeit with some limitations and questionable aspects.

The show’s core material is conveyed through colorful, large-scale graphic layouts resembling magazine pages that reach from the height of one’s knee to above one’s head. The layouts are filled with text and reproductions of pages from comic books. It’s an eye-grabbing approach that produces visual overload at times. Also, transitions from one section of the show to another occasionally lack continuity and flow.

But when it comes to the core goal of highlighting Jewish contributions to comic book history, the show delivers fascinating and sometimes surprising insights.

Organized by Roy Schwartz, a New York-based pop culture historian, the exhibition opened in 2023 at the Center for Jewish History in New York and is now in the middle of a five-year national tour.

It brims with Schwartz’s zeal to highlight the Jewish roots of what he described in an interview as “a unique American art form,’’ and “the bastard child of literature and art.’’ His expertise includes having written the 2021 book, “Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero.’’

For Cleveland, Schwartz and the Maltz expanded the show to highlight the city’s role in the evolution of comic books, in collaboration with Samantha Baskind, the Cleveland State University professor of art history known for her extensive scholarship on Jewish contributions to the visual arts.

Hidden meanings of Superman

Naturally, Superman, the brainchild of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish high school students in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood who invented the “Man of Steel’’ in the 1930s, is a major focus.

Superman’s birth on the doomed planet Krypton and his parents’ effort to save him by launching him to Earth is a familiar tale. It may not be widely appreciated, however, that the story echoes that of the finding of Moses, and that Superman’s name at birth, Kal-El, is a Hebrew phrase often interpreted as “voice of God’’ or “vessel of God.”

Superman’s powers evoke the myth of the Golem, a massive, Samson-like humanoid purportedly molded in clay by a 16th-century rabbi Prague to defend Jews from pogroms.

As the show points out, Jewish fans have certainly understood such signals.

Somehow, I'm not so sure they do, seeing how some of those who stick with leftism are so hostile to Israel, their country of origin, that it's hard to believe at this point they care about any "signals". Speaking of which, this exhibit features at least 2 comic creators who decidedly aren't worth seeing there:

Also featured in the Cleveland section of the show are printed works and original drawings from Harvey Pekar’s ironic and self-deprecating “American Splendor” series, Peter Kuper’s hilarious “Spy vs. Spy” episodes in Mad Magazine and Terri Libenson’s Jewish-centered narratives in series, including “The Pajama Diaries.”

Cleveland Heights native Brian Michael Bendis is represented by outstanding works including a spectacular 2006 ink drawing for an Avengers episode depicting an explosion on a crowded street in what could be Downtown Cleveland.

When somebody as awful as Bendis is included, despite how overrated and atrocious his writings were on - but not limited to - series like the Avengers, something is terribly wrong. What's so "outstanding" about his cheap approach to science fiction? It's also troubling that somebody like the late Pekar was included, despite his negativity to Israel that he practically wove into a GN titled "Not the Israel my Parents promised me". These are the kind of "creators" whose works we need to see? Nope.

Conspiracists and paranoiacs might see the show as piling on more evidence for the hate-filled fantasy that Jews supposedly control everything from Wall Street to Hollywood.

On this, it's bizarre said conspiracists would want anything to do with Jewish creations, if that's how they feel, and have no interest in producing their own entertainment products that hopefully aren't laced with prejudicial visions. And then, in a very sad hint at where this NPR affiliate really stands, they say it needs an "update":

It’s also striking, given its attention to the social and political context of comic books in prior decades that “Icons in Ink’’ doesn't bring its story fully into the present.

The show’s generally triumphal tone feels oddly off-key amid the recent uptick in anti-Semitism on the left and right, and the post Oct. 7 backlash against Israel.

Debate over Israel’s military conduct in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, or settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, has inspired authors and pundits of all political persuasions.

“Icons in Ink’’ hasn’t been updated to reflect the turmoil. It could be said that because the show was organized in 2023, there hasn’t been enough time for a significant response to current events from Jewish creators of comic books or graphic novels to warrant attention.

But it seems to be a missed opportunity that the show doesn't mention the conflicted feelings about Israel that Pekar explored in “Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me,’’ published in 2012 as one of his last books.

There’s also no mention of the three-page spread criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza published in The New York Review of Books in February 2025 by Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the Holocaust-related graphic novel “Maus,’’ whose work is otherwise lauded in the show at Maltz.

Such publications and others like them represent an intriguing opportunity to revise “Icons in Ink’’ as it continues to travel. The exhibition argues successfully that the Jewish experience in comics needs to be understood more deeply.

Given that goal, some freshening could make the show even more relevant and up-to-the-minute. After all, as the exhibition demonstrates, Jewish comic book creators and graphic novelists have been pulling no punches for decades in messages both overt and subtly coded.

When they insist Sacco's a recommendation, and no right-wing creators like the late Joe Simon are mentioned at all, or even Will Eisner, that speaks volumes as to where they really stand on this. It's actually amazing Pekar's screed didn't turn up at the exhibit, but even so, he's hardly somebody I'd consider a perfect choice any more than Spiegelman. Also note how the news site omits issues like Jews being murdered by the Religion of Peace, and all they care about is making Jews look like the sole ones responsible for anything bad happening post-October 7, 2023, while obscuring the more serious issues caused by said religion.

I'll give Schwartz and company this: they may have deliberately avoided some of these issues because they realized Pekar's POV was divisive, and it wouldn't do any good post-10.7.2023 to bring something like that into the mix. Even so, if they didn't bring in something that could provide a more positive viewpoint on Israeli issues like a Japanese mangaka's publication, then it's otherwise a defeat, though not in the way NPR wants to frame it. What they say about the exhibit in that context is shameful, and if that's their position, why'd they even bother to cover the project?

DC desecrates Wonder Woman for "pride month"

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart informs that for their latest, pointless "pride month" special, DC's included a transsexual pseudo-Wonder Woman, using a previously created character to put in the costume:

DC Comics has announced the introduction of a transgender version of Wonder Woman for Pride Month.

The plot of the upcoming Justice League Dream Girls – A DC Pride Event #1 comic follows the company’s transgender character, Nia Nal, aka Dreamer, as she and several other characters enter into an alternate reality where Nia, not Diana Prince, had become Wonder Woman. [...]

The character first appeared on TV in 2018 — but not in the comics. Transgender actor Nicole Maines first portrayed Dreamer on the CW’s Supergirl TV series that aired from 2015 to 2021. The character finally made the switch to comics in 2021 — also in a DC “Pride” event issue — after Supergirl was canceled. [...]

Along with comics writer Jadzia Axelrod, actor Maines also helped to write the Wonder Woman switch issue, according to reports. [...]

DC has turned several of its top stars into queer characters over the last decade.

In 2023, DC issued a line of comics in which Alan Scott, who is the Green Lantern, turned out to be gay. But the comic flopped hard and sales were dismal.

The year before that, DC’s attempt to make Superman’s son, Jon Kent, into a randy bisexual character also flopped and was cancelled after only 18 issues.

DC has also pushed a list of their long-standing character into the LGBTQ+ theme, including Midnighter and Apollo, Batwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and the Tim Drake version of Robin.

Well this is more than enough reason to practically avoid advertising in their comics, based on how they're desecrating even so much as the costume of an iconic figure, putting a politicized, badly created character in the outfit. And they keep doing it despite how rock bottom sales have been for all these repeated shovings down the throat, which they also refuse to stop keeping canon. Some can reasonably ask if the new Paramount ownership intends to let DC keep receiving funding if all they care about is wasting it on propaganda that's not selling. But chances are just as possible they won't take any steps to make DC quit, so we can only hope. The best to hope for at this point is if Paramount ownership will close down the publisher, which would probably be the best thing to do for now. And even then, they don't belong under a conglomerate ownership.

The whole pride month propaganda's been going on too long, and what's also aggravating is how this is what they consider a big deal, not holidays from foreign countries like Thailand's Yi-Peng lantern festival. All this LGBT propaganda only underscores the stunning lack of creativity now dominating the mainstream.

Basketball star develops a comic with Archie

Variety reports Shaquille o'Neal, famous veteran basketball player, is developing a comic at Archie, about the history of a former African king who'd fallen victim to slavery and gained freedom through piracy:

NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has partnered with Archie Comics to develop “Vengeance Unchained: The Legend of Black Caesar,” a new comic book series about the rise of the mythological West African pirate. Stephanie Williams will write the series, while Ray-Anthony Height and Studio Sky-Tiger will handle the art.

The official logline for “Vengeance Unchained” reads, “An African king of extraordinary physical presence must navigate the brutal transformation from royalty to slavery to piracy, searching for his kidnapped love while discovering that freedom in the Caribbean comes only to those willing to take it by force.”

“Growing up I always loved stories about warriors who refused to quit,” said O’Neal. “Black Caesar starts as a king, loses everything, and takes his freedom back on his own terms. That’s the kind of story I want to help tell. We built something that’s going to entertain you and make you think, and I’m ready for the world to see what we created with Archie Comics, an iconic brand I have been a big fan of for many years. Archie has such an incredible legacy of storytelling and being able to collaborate with a brand that has meant so much to generations of fans made this project even more exciting for me.”

What I don't understand is why O'Neal wants to do this with a company that's long succumbed to wokery, and based on that, is hardly the best place to do such a project. There's bound to be plenty of independent publishers where he could've produced this project, and it would've been just as significant. I'm sure the history O'Neal's building on has importance, but doing it at Archie is decidedly not recommended. They tainted their legacy in the past 15 years, and it still doesn't seem like they'll ever mend it.

Marjane Satrapi, artist of Persepolis, passes away at 56

The UK Guardian reported that Iranian-born artist Marjane Satrapi, who created the GN Persepolis, died at just 56:

Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian artist, film-maker and graphic novelist whose acclaimed memoir Persepolis helped reshape international perceptions of Iran, has died at the age of 56.

In a statement provided to French news agency AFP, relatives said she had “died of sadness” after the death of her husband, the Swedish producer Mattias Ripa.

Ripa died on 8 April last year. Later that month, a series of messages posted on Satrapi’s Instagram account revealed the phrase: “For I lost the love of my life.”

Tributes have been paid to Satrapi from across French politics and culture following news of her death. President Emmanuel Macron said Satrapi was “a great artist who turned her Iranian childhood into a universal tale,” adding: “With her childlike perspective, her irony, her tenderness, her inner demons, the author created a moving world with which readers identified.”

Writing on X, Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the French National Assembly, said: “Marjane Satrapi had turned her work into an act of freedom. With Persepolis, she had given a face and a voice to the Iranian revolution, proudly carrying the fight for women’s freedom and dignity. France loses an immense artist. To her family, to her loved ones, I offer my most sincere thoughts.”

Born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran, near the Caspian Sea, Satrapi was raised in Tehran by her father, an engineer, and her mother, a dress designer. As a teenager, she left Iran after her parents sent her to Europe to continue her education, hoping to spare her from the restrictions imposed under the Islamic Republic. She eventually settled in France, arriving in 1994 and later becoming a French citizen in 2006.

Throughout her life, Satrapi was a vocal opponent of Iran’s clerical establishment.

In 2000 she published Persepolis, a comic book memoir that became an international publishing phenomenon. It told the story of a rebellious and outspoken young girl navigating the upheaval in Iran after the shah is overthrown in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The story follows the protagonist’s attempts to understand the country’s violence and ideological control before she is sent alone to Europe at the age of 14.

Satrapi told the Guardian in 2024 that Persepolis was about making western readers reflect on the humanity of Iranian people, that, “Oh, they’re actually human beings like us”.

The memoir sold millions of copies, established Satrapi as one of the most widely read Iranian authors in the world, and its success challenged many western assumptions about Iranian society and culture.

She was clearly one of the few who showed the courage to speak out against an Islamofascist regime like what Iran's been for 47 years, and it's rather hypocritical for somebody like Macron to suddenly offer her praise for her GN, considering he didn't do enough to oppose Islamofascism himself, and wouldn't help in the recent war against Iran.

It's sad she's died too young, because here, the Islamic regime and terrorist machine in Iran is hopefully falling apart, and will ensure future generations of women who don't want to be forced to follow sharia dictations like having to wear niqabs won't have to. That's what makes Persepolis so valuable as a comics biography, and it remains to be seen how many more around the world who actually believe in civilized values will agree on that. Including the Guardian themselves, considering their leftist stance doesn't exactly speak the positions of Satrapi.

Mandalorian movie now a certified flop, and new Supergirl movie may be next

John Nolte at Breitbart recently spoke about how the Mandalorian and Grogu film has thudded harder in its 2nd week:

Back in 2018, when Solo: A Star Wars Story was bombing, it grossed $29.3 million in its second weekend, which represented a collapse of 65.2 percent. After ten days, its total gross was just $149 million.

The Mandalorian and Grogu’s second weekend gross will land at right around $23 million, which will put its ten day gross at around $135 million.

The Mandalorian will be lucky to cross $175 to $200 million domestic.

We’ll see what the overseas number looks like, but $450 to $500 million is the likely break-even number. Solo died off with $393 million global. The Mandalorian will be lucky to hit $300 to $350 million.

So, yeah, Disney’s groomers are looking at a massive loss.

Tee hee.

Gee, how will Disney blame the fans for this one? In the past (and even though pretty much every Star Wars fan loves the female-led Rogue One), we’ve been slandered as sexist for hating on Disney’s Skywalker sequel trilogy. Well, The Mandalorian is led by a guy. We’ve been smeared as homophobic for hating all the queer shit in Solo (pansexual, robot-humping Lando). Well, as far as I can tell, the Mandalorian character isn’t queer.

Disney will never blame itself. So what’s left…?

You gonna blame it on Star Wars fatigue when there hasn’t been a Star Wars movie in seven years?

It is pretty fascinating how, when the last of the previous trilogy left theaters, so too did pretty much anything else SW-related. The excitement of the SW franchise, alas, is gone, and the Mandalorian movie's proven it by now.

In addition to the above news, Nolte also brought up the overall costs of the Supergirl film's production, and how the box office prospects don't look good:

Tucked away inside the far-left Deadline’s free ad (“Supergirl Advance Tickets Go On Sale Before DC Pic’s June 26 Opening”) for the upcoming Supergirl is the real news: this sucker cost $175 million to produce.

From here, the math is pretty simple. Add at least $75 million for promotion (that’s me being generous), and what we have here is a price tag of a quarter of a billion — with a “B” — dollars.

That puts its break-even number somewhere between $450 to $550 million. Early tracking says that’s not happening.

Quite laughably, Deadline writes: “Supergirl we hear cost $175M net before global P&A spend with breakeven at $315 global box office.”

You catch that? The “breakeven at $315” million??? Really, breakeven is $315 million off of a $175 million production budget that doesn’t even include promotion costs?

Yeah, no — no way.

But that’s the magic of being a major studio in a corrupt media world where everyone wants access and your advertising — the more your movie costs, the lower the breakeven number. Yep, Democrats sure got it good.

Already, early box office tracking for Supergirl is not good. As we get closer to the late June release date, these numbers could go up or down, but as of now a $47 to $65 million domestic opening is expected. That is less than half of Superman’s $125 million opening in July of 2025, and Superman only grossed $618 million global. Warner Bros. and director James Gunn insist Superman still made a profit. Color me skeptical.

There's only so many "blockbusters" today that could seemingly make millions and still not turn a profit, or not make enough money to fully cover all the productiona and promotional costs. Even so, it's a shame anybody should spend so much money going to theaters for all these modern films that're little more than special effects-flooded junk. In the end, what I certainly think is that it's a terrible shame Otto Binder and Al Plastino's wonderful Silver Age creation for building up the Superman family will be done another injustice, easily worse than the 1984 film starring Helen Slater. Sometimes, it's better for some classic creations to just remain on the printed page, where it can be much more relaxing as a reading experience than as a movie.

LA's Skirball Center exhibition explores how comics shaped America

The Los Angeles Daily News wrote about the Skirball Center's current exhibition on comicdom's history as part of the USA as a whole:

A year ago, the Skirball debuted its first comic-themed exhibition in years, “Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity,” a celebration of the life and work of Kirby, who helped create such comic book icons, such as Captain America, the X-Men, Black Panther and the Avengers.

Now, with “Inventing America,” the center has widened its gaze to include the story of comic books from the early decades of the 20th century to the present, examining creators such as Kirby, yes, but linking the art and adventures to the story of the United States over the past century.

“We greenlit both of them at the same time, knowing they would build on each other,” says Michele Urton, the Skirball’s museum deputy director and co-curator of “Inventing America” with comics expert Patrick A. Reed.

“The overview, because it’s an American history exhibition, we really wanted to time that to America 250,” she continues. “And for practical reasons, we needed a bit more time to do a larger survey.”

I do wonder if it'll cover stuff leading up to say, 2020, by which time quality long plummeted, and if they'll take an objective look at history? Sad logic suggests they won't.

In many ways, “Inventing America,” which runs through February 2027, tells a parallel story of the rise of youth culture in America.

“Comic books were really that first flowering of youth culture,” Reed says. “The first time that there was an entertainment form targeting kids, not only as the audience but as the direct consumer. Publishers recognized that all of a sudden, they can be selling things for nickels and dimes and targeting the kids directly.

“That’s sort of Ground Zero for everything that follows,” he says. “Today in America, youth culture is the driving force of pop culture. That all emerged following the comic book, the 45 RPM record and Saturday morning cartoons.

On this, one can only wonder if youth culture still holds the same influence it once did, seeing how in the past decade, there was less of it in films and TV. And based on how younger generations have been indoctrinated in schools to be uncreative and unproductive, can anyone be surprised if that's another reason why comics have fared no better than other entertainment forms in providing youth culture with what to enjoy when they're uninterested? If sales today are poor, that tells something, and prices long went up far beyond nickels and dimes.

Many of the early comic book creators we still remember today – Superman’s Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel, Batman’s Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Captain America’s Jack Kirby and Joe Simon – were the children of European Jews who immigrated to the United States.

“A lot of that’s because the industry was founded in New York City, which was a major center of immigration,” Reed says. “The comics companies that were sort of low-end publishing coming out of pulp and broadsheets were an industry founded largely by immigrants, by Jewish Americans.

“And if you were a young Jewish American in New York City, and you had artistic aspirations as Jack Kirby did, if you wanted to work in the arts, the comic book was there.

“The kids in the Lower East Side [where Kirby was born] weren’t necessarily attending fine art programs or going to art schools,” Reed says. “They weren’t necessarily able to jump straight to commercial illustration. So to work in comic books was a way to express your creativity and also provide for your family.”

And the comic book industry has remained, to varying degrees, a world of art and storytelling with its doors open wide.

“As comic books move from the Marvel-DC model and expand in the 1960s, you get the whole underground movement,” Urton says. “People began self-publishing. They’re coming at it from a different angle.

“I think that because the comic book is a format that continues to change and evolve, and that can be created really inexpensively and self-produced, you continue to see entry into this field for a wider and wider range of folks,” she says. “As Patrick likes to say, anyone with a pencil and a piece of paper can become a comic book artist.”

To Reed, that openness creates an energy and vibrancy in comics that’s not always present in the mainstream creative arts.

That can certainly be what it's like today, when the mainstream have long been taken over by conglomerates who disrespect everything the original comics were built on, and practically threw out anybody who didn't adhere to their PC mindsets, including, but not limited to, conservatives, recalling even a liberal like Larry Hama was blacklisted, and that still seems to be in effect. Even Jews aren't respected, and all they're doing is making clear how ungrateful they are to the very community that worked so hard to develop those comics in the first place. In that context, it's not a place where doors are open wide, and we must consider some of the embarrassments that occurred in the past decade and even more recently. So I wish they wouldn't sugarcoat the present, because that's what they're doing.

I'm sure an exhibit like this has its values, but all this failure to examine everything more objectively is harming the industry in the long run, and it doesn't bode well for creativity or even productivity. And whatever one thinks of independent creations, Marvel/DC cannot continue to remain in the hands of conglomerates who don't respect the creators and their creations.

Without merit, USA comics won't have "everlasting" appeal

The North State Journal (Raleigh, NC) wrote about why American comics are so great:

Pick one up. Be seduced by its glossy cover. Gaze upon the impossibly muscular body clad in a skin-tight suit. Our hero or heroine will surely be soaring, shouting, blasting a villain into next week.

They are ridiculous. They are addictively great. Comic books, of the superhero variety, are 100% American.

Compare the thin comic book to Europe’s graphic novels, and they come off looking flimsy, infantile. Compare the American comic to Japanese Manga and they appear innocent in their fixation with heroism; they hark back to a departed American age.

Once a nickel, a dime, a quarter, now the price of a latte, they are objects of American consumer capitalism. The comic is literature in junk-food version.

Well it used to be, but that doesn't mean it was always perfect even back in the Golden Age. And if you consider how, by the turn of the century, they were on their way to putting far more forced emphasis on leftist ideologies, that's why it doesn't make much sense now to say they're objects of capitalism. The American age in question has sadly departed, and they're not fixed on heroism like they were before.

Yet what truly makes them American objects is what plays out in their 32 pages month after month, decade upon decade.

When the Fantastic Four took their fateful space journey in 1961 and “cosmic rays” transformed the quartet into unwilling superheroes, comics entered a weird realm where the all-powerful were also the unwilling, decidedly modern victims of science and circumstance.

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine (the list goes on) were given supernatural abilities that made them outcasts, obliging them to be flawed messiahs.

They were, by some quirk of the American character, bound to Peter Parker’s moral imperative: “With great power comes great responsibility.” They are versions of an American Sisyphus, bound to saving us over and over again.

What could be more American — that might, when lashed to a sense of justice, eventually, makes right? So honorable, so naïve.

Well now even the phrase from Spidey's 1962 premiere has been throughly trashed for the sake of pointless directions, not the least being the erasure of the Spider-marriage. When the paper, possibly a college-type one, won't get into any of those issues, something is decidedly and terribly wrong. There's no justice to be found in modern comics when they force in so much leftist ideologies at the expense of coherency.

To this day, though the tone is darker, Marvel and DC, the two mammoths of comics, continue to reimagine the American character.

Once side attractions in a world of leading white men, Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey and Susan Storm have in recent years emerged as leaders to reinvigorate the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four sagas. Absolute Wonder Woman has broken ground with beautiful art. Miles Morales is Spidey for a new generation.

And when they make such ambiguous statements about these leading ladies, something is wrong here too. Note the absurdity of bringing up what I assume is Spider-Gwen, some kind of otherworldly take on the 616 universe Gwen, without even making anything clear, or asking if it really does favors for the Spidey franchise. Also, not all art is good today, what with the woke damage of the past decade still being felt, and the Titans' title in the DCU is one that's suffered as a result. And they don't have a problem with the darker tone? That's practically what brought down comicdom in the long run. Also, do they have a problem with white men? One can only wonder if the writer's saying he considers Peter Parker expendable.

Yet the central fissures remain.

Bruce Wayne can’t connect with anyone other than his butler; he is the lonely individual in an atomized America. Steve Rogers bears the burden of representing the “Greatest Generation” from World War II. He is a Captain America forever out of place, even in his own land.

And could there be a more iconic tech magnate toying with humanity’s fate than Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor and his delusions of grandeur? If only our world had a bespectacled Clark Kent keeping an eye on things. Just in case.

Umm, even this is flawed if they'd consider there were stories where Bruce had affairs with ladies like Vicky Vale, Silver St. Cloud and even Catwoman. Where do they get off using that kind of laughable lecture anyway? The writer's also oblivious to how there were several stories over the years where Marvel tried to replace and harm the reputation of Capt. America for the sake of publicity stunts, and it goes without saying that today's dialogue for a lot of the regular cast doesn't feel like that of the older comics anymore.

So what's the point of this article? Practically nothing, since like a lot of other such modern articles, it won't explore what went wrong over past decades, nor will it take an objective view of Marvel/DC in their modern form. Once again, comicdom's getting nowhere fast as a result of all these phonies writing about what's hardly coverage of history.

After the overrated Barbie movie, Mattel reportedly needs a new live action "hero" in the form of Masters of the Universe

About 3 years after the woke Barbie movie that regrettably grossed a billion dollars at the box office because of cunning concealment of its political messaging, the UK Times (archive link) reports on how Mattel toy corporation is banking this time on a live action adaptation of their Masters of the Universe toy line, which saw animated cartoon adaptations in the mid-80s and early 90s. At this point, it's starting to become rather comedic how Hollywood relies on toy merchandise as a wellspring, but anyway, let's see what they say here:

The summer of 2023 marked a high point in the 81-year history of Mattel, a global toymaker based in El Segundo, near Los Angeles. The release of the Barbie movie, starring Margot Robbie, captured the global imagination, propelling Mattel and its flagship doll into the centre of the cultural zeitgeist.

For Ynon Kreiz, whose role as chief executive of Mattel was parodied by Will Ferrell in the film, it looked like a mission accomplished. After starting his role in 2018, Kreiz wanted to transform the image of his company from toy manufacturer to intellectual property (IP) powerhouse.

Now what does this mean? He's okay with making himself look bad, considering the film was a blatant attack on "sexualized capitalism", as per the ludicrous viewpoint of its director? Naturally, they won't get into details about how "imaginative" the film actually was, based on the politics it built on.

But three years on from the release of Barbie, it’s not clear that investors have recognised this shift, and now one activist investor in the Nasdaq-listed business is calling for Mattel to be taken private.

Over the past year or so, Donald Trump’s tariffs regime and other international trade concerns have knocked about a quarter off Mattel’s market value, now just over $4 billion (£3 billion). The toy market has traditionally been heavily dependent on its supply chain in China and the Far East, after all.

“We believe the market is not valuing the progress we’ve made, and more importantly the future potential of where we’re going,” said Kreiz over coffee in a London hotel.

Sounds like here, they're making a predictable swipe at Trump over his wish that businesses stop relying heavily on foreign countries to do the work, rather than USA citizens at home. Very unimpressive.

This week, he hopes the release of his second major Mattel movie — Masters of the Universe, made with Amazon MGM and filmed primarily in Sky Studios Elstree — will solidify his company’s entertainment credentials.

Masters of the Universe, starring Nicholas Galitzine, will be followed this autumn by Matchbox the Movie in October, and from there Mattel has more than a dozen other films in the works, incorporating Barney, Bob the Builder and Polly Pocket. And meanwhile, the company has invested big in making mobile games built on some of its other assets, such as Hot Wheels and Uno.

“We evolved from being a manufacturing company to an IP company — now we’re very much about brand management,” said Kreiz. “Which means it’s toys and entertainment managed together.”

Maybe that's the problem - they're making too big a deal out of adapting almost everything to film, and TV. It's honestly silly by now.

I met Kreiz the morning after the Masters of the Universe premiere in London’s Leicester Square. “People think it’s another superhero movie, but it’s so much more,” he gushed, referencing its humour and emotion.

Those that remember the original cartoon from the 1980s might raise an eyebrow at this. But those same people might equally have been sceptical about how Barbie could be turned into a Hollywood success.

The problem there is that Warner Brothers, as the studio in charge of that film, cunningly concealed how woke it sadly was. Yet according to Danusha Goska at Front Page, nobody laughed or applauded at the screening she attended. So artistically speaking, it's not like it was that kind of success, though it obviously means nothing to the profiteers who bankrolled it. Now, based on such a shoddy tale's box office grosses, they're following it up with the MOTU live action adaptation, the 2nd of its kind ever since nearly 40 years ago, another was produced in 1987, and there's something very bizarre told here:

So can He-Man, Skeletor and the other characters in the movie have the same cultural impact as Barbie? “In terms of the box office, not every movie will be the next Barbie,” said Kreiz, suggesting the answer is a firm no. “But it doesn’t need to achieve the same box office performance to have a real impact and resonance in culture.”

Nor, he added, is the box office all-important for Mattel. “We expect to see much more toy sales from this movie relative to the Barbie movie,” he said.

Why? Kreiz explained that Barbie was not “toyetic” — industry jargon meaning that it did not prompt significant new doll sales. Masters of the Universe was “not designed to sell toys” but, given the superhero nature of the film and the number of characters, it is by comparison “very toyetic”, said Kreiz.

While on-screen entertainment may play a big role in the future of Mattel, for now its major revenue source remains the physical toy market. Kreiz’s business was a victim of Trump’s tariffs regime, which disrupted and caused confusion for all US businesses that rely on international imports and exports.

Perhaps he's telling them this because he realizes lightning may not strike twice, and the live action MOTU movie may not see the same bizarre success the Barbie movie had. I'm honestly not excited to see yet another film based on toys adapted to another live action absurdity, and one must wonder why they'd want to make films that could discourage sales of their toys, which appears to be the result of the Barbie movie. Seriously, is that what they want? That their original toys crater in sales, not unlike how mainstream comicdom did in the past quarter century, no matter what the box office for the films based on them? Well that's not good. And if they're okay with discouraging toy sales, that's troubling. It's also confusing, seeing how the guy says they don't care about the box office results. Not that I consider movie adaptations such a big deal, but it's still bizarre why a movie could be produced to serve as some kind of "loss leader" for selling toys, with no clear clue as to whether the gamble will pay off. What that suggests is that the new film doesn't stand on its own in terms of entertainment value, and if not, it perpetuates a serious problem with how entertainment products are being sold, developed and marketed.

Whether the new MOTU movie sells and audiences flock to see it remains to be seen. But based on how absurd the company management at Mattel is these days, that's why it's hard to understand why we should bankroll these productions if story merit's not the name of the game here.